2016 Community Game of the Year - Results posted (at last)!

Hyetal wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Some load of crap

I think this probably breaks down in a lot of different, amazing ways, but the biggest one for me is that games aren't always "fun". The math doesn't work, because enjoying a game doesn't necessarily mean I had fun with it. And I can love a game that left me never wanting to see another frame more than one that made me start another playthrough.

And there you have me. I cannot wrap my brain around that concept.

Which is why my whole suggestion is terrible as a general theory of game ranking.

IMAGE(https://media.giphy.com/media/12XMGIWtrHBl5e/giphy.gif)

Spoiler:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/MmBKV8X.gif)

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Because I'm an engineer and therefore believe that everything is explainable through math:
Let's make up an imaginary unit of measure for fun. Let's call them Squees.

Because I'm also an engineer, I have a sensitivity to bad math, but particularly to unit errors.

Your problem is that there isn't one unit of fun, there's one unit of fun for each game, and they're not the same units.

1 EliteSquee != 1 FirewatchSquee, just as 1 meter != 1 ounce. They're literally measuring different qualities. What I get out of Firewatch is utterly, utterly different to what I get out of Nuclear Throne.

I loved Squeeze Density's last album.

My counterpart would be I played more time in Destiny than I played in the three Mass Effect's campaigns, but there were zero moments in Destiny that vaguely matched the ending of ME1 or your drifting out of the ship at the start of ME2 or Mordin's final moments in ME3. Likewise, there was a moment near the end of Firewatch which hit me so hard I remember hunching forward and exhaling, like I'd been punched in the stomach, and nothing in Elite has matched that moment.

So, basically, your squee density scale can't be purely linear; you need some form of qualitative Squee Rating that factors in as well.

Jonman wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Because I'm an engineer and therefore believe that everything is explainable through math:
Let's make up an imaginary unit of measure for fun. Let's call them Squees.

Because I'm also an engineer, I have a sensitivity to bad math, but particularly to unit errors.

Your problem is that there isn't one unit of fun, there's one unit of fun for each game, and they're not the same units.

1 EliteSquee != 1 FirewatchSquee, just as 1 meter != 1 ounce. They're literally measuring different qualities. What I get out of Firewatch is utterly, utterly different to what I get out of Nuclear Throne.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

I loved Squeeze Density's last album.

My counterpart would be I played more time in Destiny than I played in the three Mass Effect's campaigns, but there were zero moments in Destiny that vaguely matched the ending of ME1 or your drifting out of the ship at the start of ME2 or Mordin's final moments in ME3. Likewise, there was a moment near the end of Firewatch which hit me so hard I remember hunching forward and exhaling, like I'd been punched in the stomach, and nothing in Elite has matched that moment.

So, basically, your squee density scale can't be purely linear; you need some form of qualitative Squee Rating that factors in as well.

In which case it's completely pointless to rank games at all.

...

Which I suppose isn't a bad conclusion.

The whole Squee concept is built on sand since you're trying to quantify a subjective experience.

Now galvanic skin response is an easily quantified metric. Games should be ranked based on a function of galvanic skin response and time. Each game itself should then be weighted according to its median completion time, and its rank adjusted by its Metascore (with obviously bias journalists like Tom Chick removed). This I propose is the most objective and unambiguous way to determine how much you liked any given game.

Gravey wrote:

The whole Squee concept is built on sand since you're trying to quantify a subjective experience.

Now galvanic skin response is an easily quantified metric. Games should be ranked based on a function of galvanic skin response and time. Each game itself should then be weighted according to its median completion time, and its rank adjusted by its Metascore (with obviously bias journalists like Tom Chick removed). This I propose is the most objective and unambiguous way to determine both how much you liked any given game.

You know, now that I read this, I can't help but think the price you paid for the game should weigh in also.

Spoiler:

Kidding!

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

In which case it's completely pointless to rank games at all.

Not entirely. This poll tells us what the collectively most liked games by GWJers were for 2016. It doesn't tell us best, most played, longest, best economical value, most fun, most emotional, or a million other ways to potentially ranked games. But it does tell us this one thing, and that's pretty cool still.

Eleima wrote:

I feel that the fact that one of my suggested tags was "Spreadsheet Seamstress" means that I'm the one who loves spreadsheets the most. ;)

And I will forever hold a grudge that my only good tag suggestion wasn't good enough to become a tag.

Gaze your omniscient eyes down upon me, God, and bare witness to my shaking fist!

---

Now I'm not good at maths, doubting, and you're initial attempt to make me compare past relationships when I've had just the one and it ended pretty terribly because I'm an idiot... I mean, thus far you're making it impossible to speak a common language, but I think I can try.

Instead of comparing romantic relationships, let's compare kinds of relationships.

You got a platonic friend that is awesome. Whenever you get together you have a good time. Unlike other friends that have come and gone in your life, reaching out to them is effortless. Whenever you speak, there's no bullsh*t. It's just you having an awesome time talking.

Now consider the thrill of locking eyes with someone, the excited anxiety of breaking the ice, doing a bunch of cool sh*t, just sitting there talking with this stranger and opening up with a human being like you've never opened up and there's just this utter intensity from knowing they have the same butterflies floating about their stomach...

The friendship cannot offer the latter experience. It just doesn't. I've not really experienced a long-term relationship but based on conversations and articles and yatta yatta, I'm going to assume that by year two, five, ten, twenty, the latter experiences ain't bein' felt 24/7. There's an expiration date on that experience, there are a lot of marriage therapists that are confronted with couples thinking there's a problem because they want to find that excitement again.

Now, we can argue about which is the best all the ding-dong day, but that's not the point. The point is that they're all very different positive experiences that are positive for different reasons and fulfill different needs.

Here's something else to consider:

Mega Man X is a two hour game.

How many times have I played Mega Man X start-to-finish in my life? Even as an adult? What does it mean that I played it through maybe a year or two ago and am feelin' the craving to go back and play it again?

One of the reasons we quantify time spent with a game as quality is because we all come from a background (presumably) where we weren't getting a new game every week or month and therefore the longer a game was the more time we had with it before we finished and had to look through our exhausted library until something new released. I know I had this problem as my family only got new games during birthdays and Christmas, my sister never got games, and my brother's birthday was December 20th and usually got rolled into Christmas. So this meant I got one game in June, and then we got a few on Christmas. That's an awful long stretch, and while we could always rent or borrow games from friends, those always had to get returned at some point.

So, yeah, theoretically the longer a game is the better. But what is also forgotten from those days is the strength of replayability. Yes, most of the times I beat Mega Man X or Star Fox or what have you were in childhood, but that each time I went back and replayed I still had a great time. Same goes for Halo: Combat Evolved. And while I spent 70 hours on FFXV, I'm doubling down on my choice of Titanfall as #1 after replaying it recently because, start-to-finish, it is still an incredible experience even if that experience is only a tenth of the length. Meanwhile, FFXV has several tedious moments that I had to push through if I wanted to get to the good stuff, or were in fact padded by small snippets that add up such as running up and down a damn dock to talk to the hotel lady about what monsters she wants deadin'.

Sometimes time invested is a measure of raw joy. Sometimes. I'd say that, most of the time, it just means the game is engaging enough to encourage enough play to see all the content that is on offer. But once it's done?

Is it worth returning to?

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

In which case it's completely pointless to rank games at all.

Not pointless at all. I banked 7.5 Squees in the process of assembling my list.

My only squee is squee9.

I dunno, I would never marry or have a tryst with a game. I would play a game however, and then, I would think about it critically as something that a person made. In doing so, its quality and its length would have little to nothing to do with each other. If it is long and keeps me playing, great - that's something it needed to be able to do to justify its length. If it is short and delivers an awesome experience then that's also great because awesome experiences are awesome and I like having more time to spend with my wife!

There's what I like the most which could be described as my favourite. There's what I can appreciate the most which could be defined as the most impressive. Sometimes it is a combination of the two. Sometimes it is uniquely one or the other.

I can love an average game. I can be bored by a masterpiece.

The time spent playing, as well as the price of admission, even a correlation between the two, is often considered, often forgotten, but rarely a heavily weighted factor in the ranking process.

Gone Home wasn't considered lesser as much for its running time, or lack of replayability, but because it did not speak to me in the right way. It left little lasting impression other than it's incredible atmosphere. I liked it quite a lot, just not as much as many other games.

When a game has a running time not proportionate to its enjoyment factor then it can become an issue. I do dislike missing out on closure due to the experience running out of steam. It's not going to be a severe penalty, though. It's a similar story for when a journey feels to have had too abrupt an end. Being left wanting more is better than the former, it must be said, at least for me.

Check my favourites
see 60+ posts in this thread
figure YAY GOTY results out!
wade through all this crap.
Disappointment.

If that one game with Donald Trump doesn't win this thing is rigged.

troubleshot wrote:

Check my favourites
see 60+ posts in this thread
figure YAY GOTY results out!
wade through all this crap.
Disappointment.

Odd, because it's been hilarious. I love how is community goes all in on what many would call dumb sh*t.

You kids have your fun. Dont mind me.

Gravey wrote:

Clocky is just deliberately withholding the results now, to see how much longer this insanity will last.

Time to start ranking Final Fantasy Games.

FF XV > FF XIV > FF X > FF 1 > FF 6 > FF 8 > FF 3

I'm not placing FF XII on the list right now, because I want to try it again when the remaster comes out.

FFVII > FFVIII > FFXII > FFTA > FFX > FFIX > The rest. FFXIII and FFXV at the very very bottom.

I dunno, I always thought Zelda was a better JRPG than Final Fantasy.

Have you heard of Darksiders? It's like Zelda for grownups.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Odd, because it's been hilarious. I love how is community goes all in on what many would call dumb sh*t.

Yeah but at some point I'm starting to think I should change my tag to "Not Helping" because I never am...

Aristophan wrote:

Time to start ranking Final Fantasy Games.

FF XV >

Dag son, that's brave.

DS>DeS>BB>DS3>SS>LotF>DS2

At first I thought you were talking about Nintendo handhelds and was very confused.

GB>GBASP>DS>GBA>GBM>3DS>GBC

EverythingsTentative wrote:

GB>GBASP>DS>GBA>GBM>3DS>GBC

You did not just rank the Game Boy above the GBA and DS. There's some excellent GB games but they are far and few in a library of dreck. DS and GBA had much better hit:miss ratios.

Also, no Virtual Boy or Game & Watch? Disappointed.

You're not going to point out his placing GameBoy Micro above the 3DS?

shoptroll wrote:
EverythingsTentative wrote:

GB>GBASP>DS>GBA>GBM>3DS>GBC

You did not just rank the Game Boy above the GBA and DS. There's some excellent GB games but they are far and few in a library of dreck. DS and GBA had much better hit:miss ratios.

Also, no Virtual Boy or Game & Watch? Disappointed.

Forgive my rose tinted glass.

ccesarano wrote:

You're not going to point out his placing GameBoy Micro above the 3DS?

Hey man, swappable faceplates and a design straight out of Zoolander. What's the problem?